Marcello Auditore

Marcello Auditore (October 1514-1587) was a member of the Assassin Order.

Biography
Marcello Auditore was born in October 1514, the son of Ezio Auditore da Firenze and his wife Sofia Sartor. His father was of the noble House of Auditore from the Florentine Republic, and his mother was from a family of Venetians living in the Ottoman Empire's capital of Constantinople (Istanbul). Marcello grew up in the Tuscan countryside alongside his sister Flavia, and Marcello often visited his aunt Claudia. Marcello lost his father when he was ten years old, and his mother raised the two children until her death in 1535. At the age of 21, Marcello became the patriarch of the Auditore family.

Marcello learned that his father was a member of the Assassin Order while looking in the barn, where he found Ezio's writings about his experiences. Marcello also found a note from his father that explained that his family was one of Assassins, and left him with their legacy: he was able to use his old suit of armor/robes, his sword, hidden blades, hook blades, and other Assassin gear that his father had left behind. Marcello was told to meet a man by the name of Il Vecchio in Florence, and Il Vecchio could train him in the ways of the Assassins.

He headed to Florence to meet with Il Vecchio, who was elderly and in semi-retirement. Il Vecchio expected Marcello to be experienced, but when he met with him, Il Vecchio was disappointed. Marcello knew little of his father's achievements or life story, and knew almost nothing about combat. Il Vecchio spent two years teaching him about his father, and taught him how to fight, do a leap of faith, use Eagle Vision, free run, and all of the moves of an Assassin. By 1537, Marcello was ready to fight the Templars.

Marcello was introduced to a friend of Il Vecchio, Lorenzino de Medici. Lorenzino was an Italian writer who saw himself as the ideal heir of Marcus Junius Brutus, and was the Mentor of the Italian Assassins. Marcello was told to help Lorenzino with assassinating his cousin, Alessandro de Medici, who was the Duke of Florence and an ineffectual ruler. Lorenzino told Marcello to assist him by arranging a situation for him to strike. Marcello decided to hire a courtesan to lure Alessandro into a trap, and Alessandro was assassinated by Lorenzino. Lorenzino congratulated Marcello on his well-thinking, and he told him that he could make a fine assassin one day.

Marcello talked to Il Vecchio, and informed him of Alessandro's death. However, Il Vecchio was pessimistic about the future, saying that Lorenzino would not be popular for long, as he had killed his own distant cousin, and the anti-Medici faction failed to rise. Soon, Marcello learned that Lorenzino was forced to flee to Venice, and Il Vecchio told Marcello that they had to move away in order to avoid being arrested for participating in the murder of Alessandro.

The two of them headed to Tuscany, where Marcello let Il Vecchio stay with him at his villa. Marcello told Il Vecchio that he believed that they should branch out and re-form the brotherhood in order to make it stronger. Marcello and Il Vecchio headed to Venice, where the two of them gathered considerable support from Il Vecchio's contacts. However, he found out that the Venetian palace official Mario Corrado was persecuting Assassins, and on 15 March he planned to kill him. Using an arquebus, he shot Corrado in the head at the Palazzo Della Signoria, killing him. The Assassin Order was able to recover from the disasters that Corrado inflicted on them, and the Assassins rallied behind Marcello, who became their mentor.

Marcello was Mentor of the Assassin Council of Venice until his death in 1587. Il Vecchio died in 1545 of natural causes. Marcello later failed to save Lorenzino from assassination by Cosimo I of Florence in 1548, but he succeeded in playing a chess-like war against the Templars in Italy. Marcello used his puppets to take out Templar puppets in northern Italy, and in the 1580s he retired to his estate. On his deathbed in 1587, he gave his father's robes to assassin Pancrazio Cerasuolo before dying at the age of 73.